DRAKE, ANDYPlano Morning News, Section G, Dallas Morning News, December 30, 1999, by Linda Stewart BallFREEDOM’S CHILDRENFORMER SLAVE’S DESCENDANTS REMAIN A CLOSE-KNIT FAMILY Andy Drake was a free black man who farmed fertile land in what would become Plano. On that point, everyone agrees.Exactly when, where and how he obtained his freedom is a matter of debate. What is certain is that he took seriously God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.The 14 children Mr. Drake had with his wife, Easter, are their legacy. And their descendants are thought to be among the oldest and largest black families in Plano....Drake family ancestors and their kin didn’t own farmland in the 19th century. They worked it....family matriarch Lettie Drake, ...celebrated her 100th birthday in October.Mrs. Drake, who quotes Scripture like a preacher, lives in the Douglass Community, the 40 acre area of east Plano named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass....The written history is sketchy, but Douglass Community historian Ben Thomas, 77, said it’s understood that the Drakes “went back farther than anybody else.”Local legend has it that Andy Drake came to Plano in 1860 as a slave hauling logs by oxen from Louisiana. The lumber was used to build homes, and some say Mr. Drake used these treks to earn his freedom. When he returned with a load in 1864, he decided to stay after one of Plano’s early settlers offered work.Mr. Drake’s descendants tell a different story.“Daddy said that his granddaddy, Andy, came over here residents then, Mr. Drake was one of only two who had enough personal property to have it listed. His was valued at $100.“He got his name from a slave owner,” explained Perry Drake, 33, of Plano, who has researched the family’s history.Slaves owned by Silas Harrington and counted in the 1850 census were “likely the first black residents within the city limits of Plano,” according to a 1988 research project by David H. Cox.The county’s largest slaveholder that year was Collin McKinney, one of the writers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, who owned 24 of the county’s 76 slaves....In 1884, three of Andy Drake’s children were among the five founding members of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church....Leslie Drake, Andy’s grandson, attended... the Shepton Colored School, a one-room building near the current intersection of Spring Creek Parkway and Preston Road. It did double duty as a church and as a center of social life for black families west of town....Leslie Drake, 86, didn’t get to spend much time in school because he was busy working on the farm. His folks weren’t sharecroppers because the landowners didn’t lease the land to them....Gladys Harrington says that at age 98,..., she remembers the large Drake family that worked for hers and lived in shacks on their land along Preston Road.“Cecil Drake was the son. And his wife, Mary,” Mrs. Harrington recalled. “We had a big family of them; the oldest was Grandpa. They lived in a little house there. The children were the ones who did the work there. The other ones... helped with what needed to be done.“They were good people....Malisie Drake, the 80-year-old wife of Tennyson Drake Sr., said her family’s experience was more common.“My dad was a sharecropper, right over the hill from the hospital out there at Coit Road. Where all those car dealers are today, I picked cotton there. That’s where my daddy had his crops.”...“We’re a very close-knit family, very supportive of each other, always spending a lot of time together,” said Yvonne Drake Hairston, 54, one of Tennyson and Malisie Drake’s eight children...“But everybody respects each other,” said her sister, Mary Alice Drake, 60....Andy Drake lived to be more than 100, dying in 1934. His descendants in Plano are mainly working-class people....